We seek a dedicated and highly capable Scientific Project Manager (PM) to lead the operational and strategic coordination of all labs within the research team for this upcoming, large-scale, international research initiative focused on Parkinson’s Disease.
1. Education:Master’s required, with relevant experience in biotechnology, biomedical sciences, bioscience engineering, or related discipline. Preferably experience in viral vector technology, neuroscience.
2. Experience: Strong track record in project management, preferably with experience in biomedical research and/or interdisciplinary or collaborative research teams
3. Technical Skills: Comprehensive understanding of scientific research processes, demonstrated experience with FAIR data storage and sharing (readme files, use of metadata standards, familiar with protocols.io, Zenodo, other discipline specific repositories), experience with budget and resource management
4. Principles: Proven experience managing large-scale, multi-stakeholder research projects
5. Soft Skills: Exceptional organizational, communication, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to manage multiple parallel workflows in a fast-paced environment.
Key Responsibilities
6. Liaison Role: Serve as the primary point of contact between the research team and institutional and funding partners from project initiation through the grant lifecycle
7. Communication Role: Disseminate key updates and directives from funding institution to the team, manage internal communications across the team and with other collaborators
8. Coordinate meetings and events: Manage inter-team and intra-team sub-group meetings, including scheduling and preparation and distribution of scientific meeting summaries to relevant stakeholders
9. Relationship Building: Build and maintain productive relationships with PIs, team members, and collaborators
10. Team Support: Provide frequent training and guidance to team members on scientific progress, resources and opportunities, and open science practices.
Research Operations, Reporting, and Workflow Management
11. Personnel Management: Track and manage team roster and support onboarding of new personnel
12. Milestone Tracking: Track progress toward key milestones and deliverables and develop and implement strategies to ensure on-time completion
13. Progress Reporting: Lead the development and submission of annual progress and expense reports to funding institution
14. Harness Open Science: Track and share all team outputs, including manuscripts, datasets, code, protocols, and key lab materials to a centralized database, manage open science compliance review process, including implementing workflows and strategies to improve open science practices, while providing support and guidance to the team on open science best practices
15. Record keeping: Meticulous documentation of meeting discussions, decisions, and action items to maintain a clear record of project activities.
Scientific Knowledge Management
16. Knowledge Management: Support scientific and operational knowledge sharing across labs, organizations, and funding institutions
17. Network Engagement: Proactively identify scientific and operational synergies across labs, with external collaborators, and funding institutions
18. Scientific Communication: Interact regularly with the scientific staff within and across institutions as well as with the funder to align on shared goals and cross-team opportunities, and discuss scientific progress or pivots with investigators and scientific staff from funding institutions
19. Facilitate Collaboration: Facilitate scientific connections across multiple labs to maximize collaborative impact
20. Resource Management: Connect the team with available resources to enhance research impact
The Gijsbers lab (Laboratory Molecular Vectorlogy and Gene Therapy - LMVGT) is part of ADVANTAGE labs (Advanced Disease Modeling, Targeted Drug Discovery and Gene Therapy) in the group Biomedical Sciences at KU Leuven. We strongly believe that the most significant breakthroughs in rare disease research and neurodegeneration come from radical collaboration between a wide and diverse range of investigators. Our team is a vibrant, multidisciplinary environment where biologists, technologists, chemical and bioscience engineers, and biomedical scientists work side-by-side to tackle the most complex questions in the field. We are strongly committed to building and maintaining an inclusive, diverse team in terms of nationality, gender, career stage and diverse background. The group is dedicated to viral vector technology development and manufacturing, focusing on the study and modelling of rare diseases, in close collaboration with the Leuven Viral Vector Core (LVVC ; www.lvvc.be). LVVC is a fully equipped academic viral vector production core facility (BSL2 facility and expertise) and technology platform for viral vector-based (RV, LV and rAAV) and virus-like particles (VLPs for protein delivery). We operate at the intersection of synthetic biology/vectorology, molecular and personalized medicine, and rare disease modelling, utilizing cutting-edge techniques to bridge the gap between basic discovery, molecular medicine and clinical understanding. Our research focusses on (i) the engineering advanced vector modalities for gene therapeutic interventions, employing synthetic vectorology, (ii) rethinking viral vector production (USP) and purification (DSP) process and (iii) develop isogenic disease models to study rare genetic disorders, and explore gene therapy approaches to correct them, employing patient-derived cells, iPSC and organoid based modelling.
As part of the newly established, multi-year international ASAP-CRN2025 RFA Technical Track network, the Gijsbers group works with leading laboratories in the field (4 KU Leuven groups, and 1 Uni Tübingen group) and in close coordination with other groups in the Parkinson’s field.
In this ASAP CRN project, we contribute by generating a viral vector-based toolbox for a specific Parkinson-related gene set in an effort to unveil the fundamental mechanisms of Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Our goal is to deliver a standardized, distribution-ready viral vector toolbox for target knockdown (KD), knockout (KO) and overexpression (OE) of PD genes employing established production platforms for lentiviral (LV), recombinant adeno-associated viral vectors (rAAV) and virus-like particles for gene editing (VLP-CRISPR) across laboratory cell lines, human iPSC-derived platforms, including brain-on-chip models and mouse brain.
This role is a fully funded, 100% FTE position associated with a three year international grant cycle beginning in Q2 2026. In-person attendance of the ASAP consortium meetings is a mandatory requirement (once or twice a year, EU and US).
The Scientific PM will be embedded within the research team as a leader and will work closely with PIs, lab managers, and funding institutions. You will act as a central node for all project operations and scientific communication, ensuring that scientific goals are met on time and on budget and that results are shared to the highest standards of Open Science.